The Taste of Rain
by Sister Coyote
Summary: Balthier, Ashe and the brief rainy season of Dalmasca. Ashe/Balthier. Post-game.


"You put me in an awkward position, you know," Ashe said, once the doors to the Rose Chamber closed, leaving herself and her prisoner alone.

"I do know that, Ashe," Balthier said. He dared to use her forename, as he dared to look on her face: her face still the same as it had been, even beneath the diadem of her office; her body still the same as it had been, even beneath the royal finery of her robes. Dalmascan queens traditionally wore silk, in deference to the heat of the country, but today she wore velvets more like those of the Archadian nobility. No wonder. It was raining—the torrent-rain of Rabanastre in the rainy season—and the rain brought with it a chill and damp uncommon to the Dalmascan palace.

"Should I let you free, I would be accused of favoring a pirate—and not only that, but a pirate of Archadian extraction—and furthermore, of being soft on wrongdoing when it suited my personal preferences, which, I needn't tell you, is not something I need. However. Should I punish you in accordance with your crime, I should be locking away a dear friend and trusted ally, which would do my heart no good." She turned, put her hands on her hips (and was, for one moment, the princess he had known: sharp-tongued, short-tempered, rash, beautiful). "Whatever possessed you to try to steal from my treasure-house?"

"A contract," he said. "I would never have, else—but I believed the quarry to be in the ruins of Nalbina, not here. Never here. But it would do me no good, in terms of securing future contracts, to abandon my agreement at the first sign of danger." He gave her his best rueful smile, all charm. "I did my best not to be caught by you, princess."

She did not correct his misuse of her title. "It would have been much the simpler had you permitted me to grant you the Double Star of Dalmasca."

"And that would be _less_ good for my reputation at Balfonheim Port, to be Hero of the State. Any state."

She sat, then, not on her throne but on the edge of the topmost stone step leading to her throne. After a moment, he sat beside her—awkwardly, with his hands behind his back. After a moment, she said, "I will unlock you if you will not try to escape."

"I would not gladly lie to a lady," he said, inclining his head in an overblown show of courtesy, and she laughed, and then looked wry.

"You put me in an awkward position," she said, again, and to his surprise touched his face gently, the line of his jaw. "What _am_ I to do with you?"

* * *

It rained steadily all night. He slept not in a dungeon room—Ashe granted at least that much—but in a servant's quarters. It was far better than dungeons; there were no rats, there was a fireplace, the bed was serviceable and the food was actually quite good: spiced curry, much the same as the travel-food Penelo had made on the road. But it proved no easier to escape than a dungeon quarters. The only window was an arrowslit, wide enough to get an arm or a head out but too narrow by far for his shoulders, even sideways. The walls, judging by the arrowslit, were a foot and a half thick, the stone blocks tightly cemented. His door was heavy oak, locked not once but twice, once from the inside with a key he did not have, once from the outside with a padlock, and then barred—from the outside, of course.

He sat in the ledge beside the windowslit and looked out on Rabanastre in the rain. Heavy grey skies reflected themselves in wide puddles—unlike Archadia, Rabanastre was not built to drain off rainfall—but beyond the city itself he could see the desert hills breaking into greenery. The desert greening had a particularly desperate, hysterical edge to it—a vivid green he would not have believed present in nature, marked through with channels of brown where water cut paths, streambeds that would last only a week, perhaps two, before they dried and became invisible beneath desert scrub.

The air in his room was cold and the stone walls damp, and though he had been left blankets aplenty to soften his bed he preferred to sit by the window and smell the rain.

Ashe came to see him after only one day, and inquired as to his wellbeing, and offered him whatever entertainment he might require: something to read, cards with which to play Single Diamond or Cat's Favor. "I should like to see the open sky again," he said.

She looked pained. "Do not ask me for what I cannot grant you."

"You are queen. You can do what you will," he said, though he who had been Ffamran, once upon a time, knew that to be a lie among lies.

She frowned, then, and for a moment he could see clearly Queen Ashelia, lovely and terrible, beloved of her people. "Queen I am, but I bow to the rule of law. Flaunting the law is the privilege of those who do not have authority and power. For you to defy justice makes you a rogue; for me to defy justice would make me a tyrant."

"Some chains you have," he said. "I think I would sooner have mine, and answer to myself only, and not to Law and Fate and Duty and Justice."

"I was born to it," she said, more softly. "I accept the burdens therein."

* * *

Yet still on the third day she granted his request, and they walked in the gardens—wet underfoot, abloom, the plants mad with the short brilliant growing season. He thought that if he could stand still for a little time—an hour, no more—that he could probably see one of the great wax-leafed trees bud and swell and open flower, all before his eyes. The whole garden was mad, fierce, drunk on water.

The sky was grey and dripping but the clouds at the horizon glowed with the luminous glory of mid-rain sun. Had the clouds been less thick, there might have been a rainbow. Instead there was merely a halo of light, bright on the undersides of slate-grey clouds. He walked carefully, his hands still bound behind his back, so as not to slip on the muddy path or on the grass, made slick as satin by rainwater. Ashe's guard walked before them, five paces, until she drew him into what he believed at first to be a gazebo and then realized was a cluster of trees, with a latticework suspended between their branches, all grown over with vines abloom with white flowers.

He thought to make light of the romance of the setting, but when he turned to her to do so, Ashe kissed him. Her mouth tasted of rain and sweet white wine.

He did not know what to do, and so he fell back into his role: kissed her, as expertly as he could but without pressing his suit, and then, when the kiss was done, he said, lightly, "Does the princess fancy a pirate lover?"

"You taste of freedom," she said. "Promise me you will come back."

He might have asked what she meant, for he was her prisoner, and at her call. But instead he put his hand out on the rough, wet bark of the tree, and said, "I will come back. I swear it." And before they stepped again from the bower, and into the sight of her guards and handmaidens, he kissed her again, gently, to give her the taste of freedom again.

* * *

That night, he was not surprised to hear a soft rattle at his door, or to see it open; even less was he surprised when the figure who opened the door, cloaked in grey to hide against the palace's stone walls, had high ears and brilliant eyes.

"Fran," he said. "I knew I could count on you."

She inclined her head but, ever honest, said, "I had help."

He thought of the blossoming of the desert, and the taste of rain, and promises that even he, a rogue indeed, must keep. "I imagine so," he said.

"Come now," Fran said. "The hover awaits. We haven't much time before the guards return," and he went with her, without a word.


End file.
